Does royal stardust help the homeless?
Rough sleeping is a key issue for our time, but can Prince William really help?
Kensington Palace
- Neil Ansell
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When I was six years old, my family was made homeless following a fire; a fire in which we lost everything and I had to be rescued from in the dead of night. Nowadays, we would be the responsibility of the local authority in Portsmouth. But back then, we were on our own and spent a bleak winter in a building with no running water, electricity or heating. It’s made me keenly aware that homelessness is something that can affect almost anybody. All it takes is a spark.
Homelessness has continued to be a spectre in the background of my life. In my 20s, I ended up out of work and homeless in London for a couple of years before walking away from the chaos and washing up on the Isle of Jura in Scotland, where I put my life back together. I went on to spend ten years working with rough sleepers. Later in life, as a BBC journalist, housing and homelessness became a significant part of my beat. And most recently, the issue reared its head in some of my books – The Circling Sky and my memoir Deer Island, which is centred around a depiction of homelessness in 1980s London.
Neil Ansell has written books about homelessness in the UK. No credit
Working with homeless people can be equal parts rewarding and frustrating. Sometimes, what you offer can be life-changing, even lifesaving. But then a new government policy, perhaps a change in benefit entitlements, can release a flood of newly homeless people onto the streets, the course of people’s lives utterly changed by the stroke of a pen in Whitehall, and it can feel like you are trying to hold back the tide. Each individual homeless person’s story is unique to them, but the underlying problem is structural – a shortage of affordable housing, that whole pyramid of ingrained inequality that can squeeze people out onto the streets. You can help turn someone’s life around with empathy and a tailored response, but it can feel that, ultimately, you are addressing the symptom rather than the cause.
Prince William meeting a Big Issue vendor. Getty
Prince William has chosen homelessness as his adopted cause, and his involvement with his Homewards initiative features in the ITV documentary Prince William: We Can End Homelessness, which follows his input over the course of a year. In a clip released from the film, he is asked whether he is the right person to lead the challenge. “I come with no other agenda than desperately trying to help people who are in need. I see that as part of my role,” he says. “Why else would I be here if I’m not using this role properly to influence and help people where I can?” He attributes his interest to Princess Diana broadening his outlook.
It’s easy to be cynical – after all, the royal family sits firmly lodged at the very top of that pyramid of inequality in which we all live. And yet I have witnessed first-hand the impact that a little royal stardust can have on the public discourse. As a manager with the homeless newspaper Big Issue, I oversaw an occasion when Queen Elizabeth met up with some Big Issue vendors, and bought a copy from one of them, in front of the watching press. And for a while there was a huge public discourse about a problem that’s all too often completely ignored. Because of the then Queen’s gesture, even magazines that typically trafficked only in celebrity tittle-tattle were forced to engage, at least briefly, with a pressing social issue.
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The same likely applies in this case: Prince William’s involvement may well bring much-needed attention to a neglected issue. I anticipate that the individual homeless people who participate in this initiative may benefit greatly, and that can only be a positive thing. As to whether it will touch on the root causes, I have my doubts, for the royal family are the ultimate beneficiaries of the status quo, and the demand made of them in return is always that they should attempt to do good works without upsetting the applecart.
Authors
Neil Ansell
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